State Assembly leaves open-government bill in limbo

The New York State Assembly met in special session this week but took no action to send unsigned bills to the governor. AP Photo/Hans Pennink

This week state Assembly leaders plan to send the governor a bill that would allow New York City livery car drivers outside Manhattan to pick up street hails. Cuomo is now forced to either sign or veto the measure.

But meanwhile 16 other bills passed by the Assembly and Senate last session remain bottled up in the legislature. Among them is a measure that would require state and local agencies to make all documents discussed at public meetings available on the appropriate agency’s website before meetings occur. If an agency doesn’t have that capability, physical copies must be available at the meeting.

If the bill, known as A72, does not reach the governor’s desk within the next two weeks it will face the possibility of automatic elimination in the new year: The governor must sign any bills submitted from the last legislative session within 30 calendar days or they will die in a “pocket veto.”

When The New York World first reported on the open-government bill in early October, the measure had passed the legislature in June but had yet to be sent on to the governor for approval more than three months later. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) was in the process of sending the hundreds of outstanding measures to Gov. Andrew Cuomo in batches to give the governor’s office time to review each one. A72 was among the final 30 scheduled to be delivered. Assembly Legislative Services said at the time that the bill would be transmitted that month, and the bill’s sponsor, Amy Paulin (D-Westchester) said she was confident that it would be, especially in light of Gov. Cuomo’s pledge for increased transparency in state government.

So why the delay? The governor’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Spokespeople for the Speaker and Assembly were not able to respond before this story was published. But Assemblymember Paulin offers a possible clue: She says the governor’s office has relayed complaints from state agencies that the proposed law’s requirements are too onerous.

Paulin dismisses such concerns. “We have all these practicable words there,” she said. “If it’s too expensive, if it costs anything, etc.” she said, agencies are not required under the measure to disclose every document. The main purpose of the bill, she added, is to promote citizen involvement in local government.

“The governor should sign the bill,” said Russ Haven, legislative counsel at the New York Public Interest Research Group. He agrees that the language of the bill is noncontroversial. “There’s ample room in the legislation to allow agencies and departments to not provide these documents when it’s just not doable for them,” he said. The bill is extremely timely, he adds, in light of the governor’s property tax cap, signed earlier this year and going into effect in 2012, which will raise the stakes for county and school budget meetings and may draw more people to the process.

“To participate in those debates, people need access to those primary documents,” Haven pointed out. Providing documents for public meetings, he said, “seems like the most fundamental thing. You could be able to follow along and understand what’s under discussion.”

As Paulin works with the governor’s office toward passage of two other bills she worries that A00072 is destined for a pocket veto. “I’m in a position of knowing what it feels like working on a bill they definitely want to pass. So, I can feel the difference,” she said. “With this bill there’s no conversation like that.”

UPDATE: Spokesperson for Sheldon Silver Michael Whyland told us: “We’ll be sending any remaining bills either tomorrow or next week.”

Outstanding Assembly and Senate Bills as of 12/8/11

Besides A72, the open-government bill, measures passed last session and still awaiting delivery to the governor include an Assembly bill that gives a legal definition to children without parents and creates a formal procedure for placing them in foster care. A Senate bill would create an abuse notification system in state-licensed care facilities for the developmentally disabled. Here is the full list:

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